Mark Halpern collection

Last revised October 22, 2006 by Paul McJones.

Overview

The collection includes a set of manuals, technical reports, preprints and
reprints, and ephemera collected by Halpern during his career as a computer
programmer starting at IBM in 1957. There are also copies of some published works,
correspondence, and notes by Halpern. Although some of those have been removed
for study by Halpern, he would be willing to return the originals to the collection.
(In the listings below, these items are marked "[Removed by Halpern.]".)

The collection as originally offered to the Computer History Museum constituted 15 boxes totaling about 17 linear feet – see this version of the catalog: catalog-2006.08.22.html. The Museum accepted the majority of the items, but rejected a portion. This version of the catalog has been edited to remove the items not accepted. The box numbers do not necessarily represent the current locations of the items in the Museum's archive, but correspond to the location when donated.

Bulletins, manuals

Anonymous. Machine Functions. IBM Data Processing, Form 22-8208-3, IBM
Corporation, 1957, 31 pages. "This booklet shows in simplified form the
functions of the many IBM machines used for all types of accounting,
statistical, and computational work."

Anonymous. Data Processing Bibliography. Data Processing System
Bulletin, Form J20-8014, IBM Corporation, June 1959, 13 pages. "This
bibliography has been prepared as a guide to persons interested in exploring
more fully the subject of computers and data processing. While it is in no
way a complete compilation of the available texts and periodicals, it should
serve as an introduction to the important subject areas. The reader wishing
to go further will find additional references in the publications listed."

Brochures

C-E-I-R. Modern techniques to Solve Modern Problems. 8.5"x11", 16 pages,
circa 1960. Inserted in brochure is a reprint of an article about C-E-I-R:
How a New Industry Grows up. Business Week, November 12, 1960.

Correspondence

R.J. Herrnstein. Letter to Mark Halpern, November 6, 1959, 1 page + 1
page of review comments, presumably on an article written by Halpern.
Richard J. Herrnstein was professor of psychology at Harvard, and co-author of The Bell Curve. [Removed by Halpern.]

Anonymous. Handwritten review comments. 2 pages, date unknown.
Halpern notes that these were comments by a publisher’s reviewer of a draft of an introductory book on computers and programming; never completed. [Removed by Halpern.]

Notes

[All items in this subsection removed by Halpern.]

MIH [Mark Halpern]. Simian Simulation. September 8, 1958, 3
pages. Carbon copy. "Problem: To estimate the amount of time for which a
monkey would have to be kept typing before the probability of its having
typed a meaningful phrase (see definition, below) would be better than .5." Halpern notes, "A profound study, if I say so myself; can’t think how the Nobel Committee overlooked it."

Ephemera

Clothes hanger - wood with metal hook, imprinted "The Langdon Hotel, 2
East 56 Street, New York, N.Y.". John Backus's paper on the History of
Fortran I, II, and III notes, "From late spring of 1956 to early 1957 the
pace of debugging was intense; often we would rent rooms in the Langdon
Hotel (which disappeared long ago) on 56th Street, sleep there a little
during the day and then stay up all night to get as much use of the computer
(in the headquarters annex on 57th Street) as possible." See also Halpern's
Memoirs (Part 1) Annals of the History of Computing, Vol 13, No. 1
(1991), pages 101-111.
http://www.rules-of-the-game.com/com002-memoir1.htm

D.L. Mordy. Reflections on Compilers and Other Programs. Internal
memorandum, circa January 1961, 14 pages. Ditto machine copy. "As we
complete our package of programs for the 7070 it seems appropriate to pause
and consider what we have done and what we would recommend for future work."

Mark Halpern. Request to Lawrence Radiation Laboratory Technical
Information Division ordering UCRL Report No. 12330 by Samuel F. Mendicino
and George G. Sutherland, "Fortran Compiler Written in Fortran". Attached
response says copy can't be provided because article is to be published in
"very near future in Association for Computing Machinery Journal". But see next item!

Notebook labeled "Monitors and Operating Systems"

Photocopies of June/September 1963 IBM Systems Journal series "Design of
an integrated programming and operating system" on IBSYS.

Thos. Sumner. The BrandX Monitor, May 1, 1966, 18 pages, computer
listing (upper-case only). "BrandX is a monitor system comparable in scope
to IBJOB and the Fortran Monitor System (FMS). BrandX is specifically
designed to operate on a Direct Couple System with a 7094 central processor.
The BrandX monitor was created at the Computer Center of the University of
California at Berkeley, incorporating material from other installations."

George H. Mealy. Operating Systems. RAND Report P-2584, May 1962, 92
pages. Preprint of paper to be submitted at University of Michigan
Engineering Summer Conference to be held in Ann Arbor, Michigan, June 18-29,
1962.

C.L. Baker and H.S. Kelly. RS IPL-V Interpretive System. Share Program
Submittal, December 23, 1960, 3 pages. Blueprint copy. "This initial version
should be considered a field-test version of the 7090 IPL-V system." The
document notes that this version of IPL-V ran on the MockDonald Operating
System for the 709/7090.

H. Judd. IBM 704 Information, Bulletin #2. Undated (but see #4 below), 7 pages. Two copies. Includes revisions to the 704 manual (see tab C above), recommended procedures for care and use of 727 tapes and tape unit operation, and maintenance of the installation. Two copies.

Anonymous. IBM 704 Information Bulletin #3. Undated (but see #4 below), 7 pages. Two copies. Includes Errata and Addenda to 704 Manual, Note on Type 740 CRT Output Recorder, Note on undefined operation codes, R.P.Q.'s approved for use with 704's and associated peripheral equipment, Special Devices available for use with 704 Peripheral Equipment.

Anonymous. IBM 704 Information Bulletin #4. September 1956, 2 pages. Two copies. Includes Errata and Additions to 704 Manual, and 737 and 738 Memories. "Note: The information in this Bulletin covers the two-month period August-September, 1956."

Preprints of the 16th National Meeting of the Association for Computing
Machinery, Los Angeles, September 5-8, 1961.

1968 Programming Symposium Proceedings, Atlantic City New Jersey,
September 24-27, 1968. Confidential Technical Report TR00.1775, IBM
Corporation. Designated IBM Confidential, however Introduction notes, "We
feel certain that a large number of these papers will be published
elsewhere."

Volume I: Information Structures, Processes, and Systems, 576 pages.

Includes paper by M.I. Halpern: Debugging Features of the PROTEUS
System. See also box 6, Publications by Mark Halpern.

Fred Pollack. Letter to Dale Jordan, Tymshare, July 6, 1972. "Due to
contractual agreements with On-Line Systems, Inc., we are unable to market
our APL processors for the DEC PDP-10 to timesharing firms for about one
more year. We will of course inform you when we are able to enter into an
agreement with Tymshare."

The Ethernet Local Network : Three Reports.
CSL-80-2, Palo Alto Research Center, Xerox Corporation, February 1980.
Photocopy; includes copy of DEC/Intel/Xerox. The Ethernet : A Local Area Network Data Link Layer and Physical Layer Specifications, Version 1.0, September 30, 1980.

Robert M. Metcalfe and David R. Boggs. Distributed Packet Switching for Local Computer Networks. Appeared in Communications of the ACM, Volume 19, Number 7, July 1976.

Ronald C. Crane and Edward A. Taft. Practical Considerations in Ethernet Local Network Design. Presented at the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, January 1980.

John F. Shoch and Jon A. Hupp. Measured Performance of an Ethernet Local Network. A preliminary version was presented at the Local Area Communications Network Symposium, Boston, May 1979.

S. Gorn. Common Programming Language Task : Final Report : Part I :
Section 5. July 31, 1959, 164 pages. Original technical
report; discoloration on right side edges; does not affect readability. See also next item.

S. Gorn and E. Parker. Common Programming Language Task : Final Report :
Part I. The Institute for Cooperative Research in cooperation with The Moore
School of Electrical Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, June 30, 1960,
102 page. "Object: Briefly stated, the primary objective of the common
programming language task of project ADAR is to formulate and determine the
feasibility of standard codes for representation and programs for all army
computer installations. (In particular, for the FIELDATA equipment being
developed by USASRDL). Implementation of this objective will lead to
specifications for (1) common programming language, (2) standard library
storage format, and (3) standard translating techniques." Discoloration on
right side edges; does not affect readability.

Notebook labeled "Chris Shaw's stuff"

D.V. Schorre and C.J. Shaw. A Calculus of Processors. March 1965, 22
pages.

ACM 65 Reviewer's Comment. Apparently refers to previous item.

Letter from W.H. Wattenburg to Christopher Shaw, April 28, 1965.
[Removed by Halpern.]

C.J. Shaw, A. Kroger, and J. Yott. Extensible, Computer Efficient
Language Design. 5 pages. "The purpose of this project is to develop the
prototype for a series of extensible, computer-efficient programming
languages for small computers." Circa 1970?

Notebook labeled "Ed Lowry's Compiler"

Distribution list of various IBM employees circa late 1960s; Halpern's name is checked.

E.S. Lowry. A Compiler for Building Large Programs, 26 pages. First page
originally said "for 1968 SDD Programming Symposium", but this was crossed
out -- see Box 3 for a proceedings of that symposium.

Box 6

Artificial Intelligence

A Newell, J.C. Shaw, and H.A. Simon. Report on a General Problem-Solving
Problem. P-1584, The RAND Corporation, December 30, 1958, revised February
9, 1959, 27 pages. Preprint of a paer given at International Conference on
Information Processing, UNESCO, Paris, June 13-23, 1959.

J.P. Haverty. Programming Language Selection for Command and Control
Applications. P-2967, The RAND Corporation, September 1964, 25 pages.
Photocopy of technical report supplied by Office of Technical Services, US
Department of Commerce.

Computational linguistics

Yehoshua Bar-Hillel. Some Theoretical Aspects of the Mechanization of
Literature Searching. Technical Report No. 3, Hebrew University, Jerusalem,
April 1960, 74 pages. Original technical report. [Bar-Hillel exhibits his
skepticism at the utility of the full-text indexing that underlies modern
search engines such as Google -- for a discussion, see
http://www.combinatorics.org/Volume_8/PDF/v8i2i4.pdf]

Donald E. Walker. Computational linguistic techniques in an on-line
system for textual analysis. Information System Language Studies Number 22,
MTP-105, The MITRE Corporation, July 1969, 11 pages. Original technical
report.

Publications by Mark Halpern

[Mark Halpern.] Outline History of the XPOP Project. Two pages, with
entries from fall 1961 to November 1964 on first page and a set of
references by Halpern and others on the second page. Ditto machine copy with
inked correction. [Removed by Halpern.]

Mark I. Halpern. Standardize the System, Not the Language. 7 pages. Preprint of paper presented at Proceedings of the First Spaceborne
Computer Software Workshop. See Box 8 for the proceedings of this conference.

Mark I. Halpern. Debugging Features of the PROTEUS System. 6 pages.
Photocopy of preprint of paper presented at 1968 Programming Symposium
Proceedings. See box 3 for a copy of the proceedings. [Removed by Halpern.]

Mark Halpern. Foundations of the Case for Natural-Language Programming.
[Removed by Halpern.]

Correspondence between Halpern, Nilo Lindgren of IEEE Spectrum
concerning publication of a modified version of Halpern's "Foundations
of the Case for Natural-Language Programming" in IEEE Spectrum, 1966
through 1967.

Proofs of IEEE Spectrum vesion, February 2, 1967.

Correspondence between Halpern and others concerning a talk by Halpern
at the 1967 American Management Association Briefing Session, 1967. [Removed
by Halpern.]

Correspondence between Halpern and others concerning a paper he
published in CACM shortly after rejoining IBM in 1968. [Removed by Halpern.]

Programming languages

Kenneth E. Iverson. The Description of Sequential Processes. Preprint of
a paper presented at 4th London Conference on Information Theory, August
1960. Ditto machine copy, two colors. [I scanned this for the SCC's APL
project.]

M.H. Perstein. Some Techniques for Describing Programming Languages.
SP-2916/000/01, System Development Corporation, January 4, 1968, 28 pages.
Original technical report.

Other

Donald E. Houghton. Computer Summary Charts and Tables. Memo Number 6,
Computing Center Memo, The Franklin Institute, February 1959, 47 pages.
"Abstract: This memo is a collection of general charts and tables on
computers. They are drawn from books and periodicals. The emphasis is on
digital material though a small quantity treats the analog computer,
primarily as contrasted with the digital variety. A source bibliography is
included."

Patricia A. Cundall. On the design of a programming language with
definitional facilities, unpublished, IBM Research, October 23, 1967.

M.E. D'Imperio. Data Structures and their Representation in Storage.
Undated. Photocopy. Draft or preprint of the paper published in Annual
Review in Automatic Programming, Volume 5, Part 1, 1969, pages 1-75.

Anonymous. Information Structures. Undated, 4 pages. Photocopy.

Notebook labeled "NSA"

See also TEMAC items by Mary D'Imperio in Box 6.

[Mark Halpern.] Note: "NSA rule on references in open literature: The name of the system (TEMAC) and the author (Mary D'Imperio) may be mentioned, but no mention may be made of NSA or the NSA Technical Journal. The provenance of the paper may be given only as: 'Unpublished working paper, Department of Defense.' (source: Ed Steeble, phone conversation of 12-9-65)"

Notebook labeled "Modula-2"

Richard Gleaves. Modula-2 User's Manual. Volition Systems, 1982.

Box 8

Proceedings of the First Spaceborne Computer Software Workshop, El
Segundo, California, September 20-22, 1966. Air Force Space Systems Division
and The Aerospace Corporation, 371 pages. Session Four contains a paper by
Halpern entitled "Standardize the System, not the Language!".

One copy of a binder containing instructions for authors,
correspondence between Halpern and the organizers after the conference,
as well as a copy of a four-part Preliminary Results of the Spaceborne
Software Systems Study serving as working papers for the workshop.

One copy mimeographed in brown pressboard cover.

One copy mimeographed in printed covers with plastic spiral binding.
Program for workshop inserted.

Anonymous. Proposed Specification of SPL : Space Programming Language.
Prepared by the System Development Corporation for the Space Systems
Division, Air Force Systems Command, Los Angeles, April 1967, 211 pages.

George T. Dellert, Jr. The Use of Macros in Translation of Symbolic
Assembly Language of One Computer to Another. Presented at the ACM Special
Interest Symposium on the Reprogramming Problem, Princeton, New Jersey, June
1-3, 1965, 39 pages. Original technical report of the Research Analysis
Corporation.

George Mealy. Anatomy of an Assembly System. Paper P-2674, The RAND
Corporation, December 1962. Reprint of paper presented at the University of
Michigan Engineering Summer Conferences, Ann Arbor, Michigan, June 18-29,
1962.

"MICA stands for Macro Instruction Compiler Assembler. The MICA
compiler is designed to be a pre-processor to a SAP language assembler;
in particular, to SCAT. At present SCAT is the only SAP language
assembler which will accept VFD instructions running longer than one
word -- a necessity for processing MICA output."

D.R. Peters. MANTIS Presentation. October 5, 1972, 6 pages. Description
of an interactive Fortran debugger for the PDP-10 written at the University
of Oregon, to be distributed jointly with DEC; proposes adopting it (at
Tymshare?).

Thomas G. Evans and D. Lucille Darley. DEBUG-An Extension to Current
Online Debugging Techniques. AFCRL-65-411, Physical and Mathematical
Sciences Research Papers, Number 110, Air Force Cambridge Research
Laboratories, June 1965. Reprint of paper published in CACM, Volume 8, Number 5, May 1965, pages 321-326.

Machine translation

See also Box 2, Notebook labeled "Syntax-Driven Things".

Peter Sheridan. Research in Language Translation on the IBM Type-701
Electronic Data Processing Machines. Joint project of the Institute of
Languages and Linguistics of Georgetown University and the IBM Corporation,
undated. Early draft of 1955 IBM Technical Newsletter paper? [See also:

"PETER SHERIDAN, Scientific Computing Service, International
Business Machines Corporation, 590 Madison Avenue, New York 22, N.Y.
presented a detailed account of the computer programming for the IBM
- Georgetown University demonstration at the June 24 session of the
Association for Computing Machines conference at Ann Arbor,
Michigan."]

"This report will attempt to present a short analysis of the general
characteristics and history of the development of NELIAC as written for
the IBM 704-709 by the author and Wes Landen of Army Signal Corps, Fort
Huachuca, Arizona. It further contains a summary of the language and its
usage, with examples, followed by a short sample program and the actual
compiler itself written in an intermediate form of its own language."

Form 32-0306, 64
pages.
Lee [J.A.N. Lee. An Annotated FORTRAN Bibliography. Annals of the History of Computing, Volume 6, Number 1, January 1984, pages 49-58. IEEE Digital Library] cites this Form 32-0306.

Form 32-0306-1, 64
pages. This version says: "Minor Revision (March, 1958). This edition, Form No. 32-0306-1, is a minor revision of the preceding edition but does not obsolete Form No. 32-0306. The principal changes in this edition are: Page 9 - Revision of text on FORMAT statements. Page 59 - Revision of example explanation."

G. Barth. An application of SHADOW to the up-dating of records in a
publishing house. Programming Note Number 49, Solid State and Molecular
Theory Group, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, October 5, 1960, 7
pages.

James C. Norton. NLS: An Office for the Future--Today. Presented at the
Telecommunications and the Office of the Future Seminar sponsored by the
International Communicatoins Association, Orlando, Florida, January 9-11,
1978, Tymshare, Inc., Cupertino, California, 16 pages.

Box 13

Annual Review in Automatic Programming

Halpern was co-editor (first with Christopher J. Shaw of SDC, later Bill
McGee of IBM) of the Annual Review in Automatic Programming for three volumes,
in 1969, 1971, and 1974. See also box 15 for a set of copies of the journal.